What the pop papers say: The Stinger

It's not often these days you get the chance to write about a successful music magazine; it's even rarer you hear of one which is a print magazine. Which makes the success of The Stinger even more something to celebrate.

It's a free publication which serves Hastings and what appears to now be known as "the 1066 area". (The implication that nothing much has happened in the area in the last thousand years or so might seem unfair, unless you've ever been to Battle.)

It looks gorgeous, and is just coming up to its third edition. It works because it treats music as a perpetual timeline and runs history alongside the contemporary. Kind of the thing NME has spent the last five years trying to fumble its way towards, but without the horrible whirring of gears. Perhaps living in an area where the main attraction is a military defeat a millennium ago makes you better at absorbing the past and using it to drive the present. Or perhaps the team is just more confident at explaining why music moves them.

Either way: a great read. Let's hope their reign is as long and solid as that of our Norman overlords.

Q, Mojo attempt to make miserable freelancers' lives a bit more miserable

Bauer is using its music magazines as a test-bed for a new contract which effectively sucks away most of the benefits of being a freelance while offering... well, I'm sure there's some sort of return deal.

A group of freelancers have issued a statement explaining why they're angry:

Bauer music magazines declare war on freelances

The following statement has been agreed by representatives of 200 freelance music journalists.

Bauer music magazines Kerrang!, Mojo and Q are in a stand-off with 200 freelance writers and photographers over the company's attempt to impose a copyright-grabbing contract. This comes just eight weeks after Mojo became the UK's best-selling music magazine in ABCs which, according to Bauer UK chief executive Paul Keenan, proved that "investing in editorial content is a winning strategy".

Bauer, a German-owned publisher which bought the music magazines and other consumer titles from Emap in December 2007, is seeking to impose new, draconian contracts on all contributors to Kerrang!, MOJO and Q. These contracts remove copyright and all financial, legal and moral rights from freelance writers and photographers while simultaneously requiring that the freelances provide Bauer with an unlimited lifetime financial indemnity in the event of legal action arising from their work.

Among various other restrictive impositions, the contract further grants Bauer the right to sell stories or photos to whomever they wish without reference to the writers, photographers or the subjects of the work - and it even presses freelances to acquire licenses from their subjects for the company to use their image for its own profit as and when it wishes.

In a covering letter delivered with the contracts, Bauer issues an ultimatum: after April 16, if the contributors do not sign, they will no longer be commissioned.

The three music magazines, which are heavily dependent on freelance contributions, are believed to be the first former Emap titles on which Bauer seek to impose the new contract. Stuart Williams, the managing director of Bauer's music titles, has confirmed the company's intent to roll out this policy across all the magazines Bauer purchased from Emap, which include Empire, Heat, Closer, Grazia, Max Power, MCN, Match!, FHM and Zoo.

Over 200 contributors to the three music magazines have refused to sign the new contract, which has been described by contributors as "foolish", "malicious", and "an unprovoked and pointless declaration of war on freelancers".

Since contributors sent an initial letter of objection to the contract in late February, Bauer have withdrawn the rights-grab from a revised version offered to a few contributors. However, the open-ended legal liabilities remain, and it is unclear whether these improvements for a few contributors will apply for long: Williams wrote to freelances that "Bauer is committed to its stated aim to seek copyright transfer."

The company has told freelances that there will be no further amendment to the contracts and that the 16 April deadline is final.

Bauer now faces losing most of its best-known music writers and photographers, including Q contributing editors Billy Bragg, Miranda Sawyer and John Harris, former Kerrang! editor Paul Brannigan, former MOJO editors Mat Snow and Paul Trynka and former features editor Jim Irvin, celebrated writers including Nick Kent, Jon Savage, Sylvie Simmons, Dave Marsh and Greil Marcus, and acclaimed photographers including Jill Furmanovsky, Kevin Westenberg, Kevin Cummins and Val Wilmer.

Westenberg speaks for many when he points out: "You'll either have to sign the contract - signing copyright away; sign and be a slave - or not work for them again. I already decided not to sign a long time ago. Never give your rights away. This is your pension and legacy."

A committee of the freelances affected has been attempting to enter into dialogue with Bauer since the first draft was issued late in February, but the company has rebuffed every overture. "Their behaviour is bizarre and counter-productive," says Iggy Pop’s biographer Trynka, who was previously responsible for overseeing MOJO and Q syndication and contracts. "As contributors, we share Bauer’s need for their titles to remain profitable, and are offering Bauer permission to use some material on the iPad and similar digital platforms for no extra payment."

Attempted rights grabs like Bauer's are far more than an assault on a specific group of music writers and photographers - they undermine the viability of freelance journalism as a whole.

Freelances bear a significant proportion of the risk in most media businesses because, behind their commission-by-commission availability, they pay for their own equipment, office space and training. Without any of the statutory sickness, holiday, maternity and paternity pay rights of staff, the only asset their work produces is their stock-in-trade: copyright ownership, as acknowledged by UK law.

Will Bauer’s magazines sell more copies if they push these contracts through, so losing the services of many of their most expert, reliable and popular contributors? Will musicians and other showbusiness talent stand idly by and see their quotes and photographic likenesses commoditized and put on sale by a publishing company? In business terms, it doesn't make sense.

Managing to annoy your best writers to such an extent is quite a piece of work. Offering a few contributors a slightly better deal is divide-and-rule. The trouble is, as freelancers will tell you, there isn't a great deal of work around at the moment, and publishers have got the whip hand. It's a pity Bauer is choosing to use that whip so rigidly.

[Related copyright licence for statement]

Andrew Collins on the NME

We wish we could pretend that we've taken a week to get round to mentioning Andrew Collins full length reaction to Stephen Dalton's piece on the NME from The Times as some sort of cosmic joke on his contention that the internet means you don't have to wait a week to hear about things any more, but actually we've taken a week to hear about it.

Andrew Collins still buys the NME, but:

I continue to read the NME because of its heritage, and for old times' sake, and because I'm actually too old to go to smelly pub gigs and sniff out the latest thing, and I'm certainly not going to loiter around MySpace at my age, so it offers me a shortcut to new stuff. But I am categorically not the NME's target audience, and I'm not going to keep it afloat on my own.

You wonder, actually, if the few thousand who do buy the NME now might not actually be significantly comprised of people like Mr Collins who buy it for old times sake.

Maybe that's where the future of the magazine could be: tempting back the audience who once bought the paper but don't feel it's what it was. Perhaps rather than worrying about pretending Joe Lean and The Bing Bang Bong are worth writing about, the magazine should swallow the commercial logic and carry rather more on Steve Earle and The Breeders - music that's still contemporary, but not so focused on the perpretual chimera of newness.

AC also misses one key point:

Paul Morley once told me that his job at the NME of the late 70s was to provide a narrative. This narrative now comes from other media - especially the internet. If you want to know what a new single sounds like, you can go and download it, you don't need someone learned and wise like Morley to describe it for you. What was once his role is now redundant. NME writers now are just music fans with moderately better access to Bloc Party than you.

But the thing is nowadays everyone can be published like Paul Morley. But not everyone can write like Paul Morley.

We treat our music press bad

Ben Myers blogs on the Guardian to ask why we're so hard on our music press. (Because much of it is very poor, probably, Ben, but do go on):

[T]he UK has the best music press in the world. For me, US music magazines such as Rolling Stone or Spin just don't compare. They may occasionally offer heftier features, but they also seem to exist more in fear of the advertising clients whose accounts keep them afloat.

UK magazines offer some of the free-spirited, funniest, most informed, unflinching, passionate and comprehensive writing around. We should remind ourselves of that from time to time.

This is simultaneously unfair to the US music magazines - if something like Clash is meant to be "unflinching" then Maximum Rock & Roll must be like a botoxed statue - and over-generous to the UK music shelf:

An established weekly like NME, or one of the weightier monthlies? The likes of Word, Q and Uncut all offer different takes on recent music, while Mojo (my personal favourite) appears to me to be the most informed and least trend-driven.

There are bright spots - The Word, Plan B, Artrocker's heart is in the right place - but to suggest that the UK outclasses a nation that offers Paste, for example, is a little curious, and it's arguable that there are very few people writing for music publications who are either allowed to, or have the talent to, produce interesting material you'd want to read regardless of whether you're interested in the bands featured, which surely is what you want from music journalism.

Ben points to the overcrowded market:

Indie music, in particular, has permeated mainstream culture to such an extent that no lifestyle, arts-based magazine, broadsheet and tabloid newspaper would be seen dead without at least some music coverage, even if it is just a 50-word review of Mark Ronson in Cosmopolitan.

To be honest, we suspect part of the problem would lay with the belief that Mark Ronson constitutes 'indie' in any meaningful sense of the word - which isn't a dig at Ben, more at the new consensus that some very, very lightweight material constitutes alternative listening. It's worrying that the NME is up against Cosmopolitan for Mark Ronson scoops - but it's probably not Cosmopolitan which is looking in the wrong place.

What an even longer, stranger trip its been

To mark its twentieth birthday, Rolling Stone published a thick paperback, What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, a compilation of some of the best bits of the magazine.

For the 40th anniversary, it's going one better, re-releasing every magazine on a single DVD priced at just under sixty quid. Even the cover where Pete Wentz appears to have a teenage girl's breasts grafted onto his torso. Even that.

They're the glittering alternative to the Brits

So closed has the distance between the Brits and the NME become that last year's NME presenter, Russell Brand, is lined up to present the Brits this year. Many of the nominations, however, don't even have a twelve month period before leaping from the "alternative" to the mainstream. Indeed, because the Brits get their shortlist out first, The Kooks were lauded as best newcomers by the dickie-bow and suit brigade before the tshirt and jeans brigade even started voting.

The NME nominations have now appeared, and even Victoria Newton would be familiar with almost everyone on the lists.

Best British Band
Arctic Monkeys
Babyshambles
Kasabian
Muse
Oasis

And - with the possible exception of Kasabian and Muse switching - that's probably the order they'll finish up in. We've said before that we do like Muse, but their constant appearance on best of lists is a puzzle for us - there are so many other bands which turn out unsurprising but decent stuff, why don't they get a nod from time to time?

And Oasis? Oasis?

Best International Band
CSS
The Killers
My Chemical Romance
The Strokes
We Are Scientists

This is quite a mixed bag - nice to see CSS and We Are Scientists are in there; the appearance of The Strokes makes us wonder if their nomination is down to them re-using forms from a couple of years ago that hadn't been properly wiped clean. We're assuming the continued kindness to the Killers is on the basis that if, as they clearly want to, they do turn into U2, a long record of being nice to the band won't hurt when it comes to circulation-boosting interviews. And My Chemical Romance, of course, are there because the paper made the mistake of pretending to be interested in Emo and are too afraid to drop the pretence entirely.

The Killers will probably win here, unless NME really wants to upset Kerrang.

Best solo artist
Lily Allen
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly
Jarvis Cocker
Jamie T
Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke's album was a bit, well, unawardworthy, wasn't it? Although obviously not as unawardworthy as Jamie T - as the album and his Gideon Coe session shows, there's something there, but it's so far from being fully-formed this sort of nomination is a little premature. Get Cape and so on is probably a little rarified in the sort of awards show where Oasis make the shortlist, so it'll be down to Jarvis versus Allen. Online voting and the famous Allen fanbase should mean it won't go to its rightful winner.

Best new band
The Fratellis
The Horrors
Klaxons
The Kooks
The View

Be honest, though... if none of these bands existed, would you bother waiting for someone to invent them? Probably a good chance the Kooks' stage school lessons on 'delivering a gracious acceptance speech' will pay off.

Best live act
Arctic Monkeys
Babyshambles
Kasabian
Muse
My Chemical Romance

The most interesting thing we can discern from this is that, since 4/5 of the acts are from the Best British Band category, even the NME admits that Oasis live are just plodding through the motions. But doesn't that infer that the paper is endorsing the version of Oasis we get on records these days? Surely not?

Best album
Arctic Monkeys - 'Whatever You Say I Am, That's What I'm Not'
Kasabian - 'Empire'
The Killers - 'Sam's Town'
Muse - 'Black Holes And Revelations'
My Chemical Romance - 'The Black Parade'

But then, that can't be the case, can it, as Oasis on record last year were just a best of - so if they're not making new records, and they're not that good live, what is it that Oasis have done to qualify for their position on the best album shortlist?

The Monkeys should probably pick up the best album prize here fairly comfortably. Did anyone actually listen to Sam's Town before they nominated it? Not at a dinner party, we mean.

Best Track
Dirty Pretty Things - 'Bang Bang You're Dead'
The Killers - 'When You Were Young'
Klaxons - 'Atlantis To Interzone'
Muse - 'Supermassive Black Hole'
The View - 'Wasted Little DJs'

Once one of the highpoints of any awards ceremony, best single is now best track and sits in the Napoleon Suite with other non-categories like best DVD. Let's hope Carl gets this one.

Best Video
The Horrors - 'Sheena Is A Parasite'
Kasabian - 'Empire'
The Killers - 'Bones'
OK Go - 'Here It Goes Again'
Panic! At The Disco - 'I Write Sins Not Tragedies'

Hopefully, the viewers of MTV2 will take care of this one. Ok Go will probably win because they were on the YouTubes.

Best Music DVD
Arctic Monkeys - 'Scummy Man'
Dirty Pretty Things - 'Puffing On A Coffin Nail'
Foo Fighters - 'Skin And Bones'
Maximo Park - 'Found On Film'
My Chemical Romance - 'Life On The Murder Scene'

Maximo Park... bloody hell, fancy meeting you here. I'm sorry, but I can't bring myself to care about this award. It sounds like the sort of thing they should be presenting at a Woolworths sales force conference rather than the NME awards.

Best Live Event
Carling Weekend: Reading And Leeds Festivals
Download 2006
Oxegen
T In The Park
V2006

The "prize for not being Glastonbury", then.

Best Film
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Casino Royale
The Departed
Little Miss Sunshine
Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Borat? Presumably they're waiting for Dirty Sanchez II to come to DVD?

Best TV Show
Extras
Gonzo
Lost
The Mighty Boosh
Never Mind The Buzzcocks

Gonzo's repeated appearance is heartwarming, the moreso as it probably has about six viewers. Mind you, the same could be said of Lost since it disappeared off into Sky One. Extras has got that Steven Merchant out of Six Music in it, you know, so at least it's vaguely musical.

Best Radio Show
Lauren Laverne (Xfm)
Zane Lowe (Radio 1)
Chris Moyles (Radio 1)
Colin Murray (Radio 1)
Jo Whiley(Radio 1)

Seeing Chris Moyles on the shortlist is like discovering that bloke you fancy reads The Sun, isn't it? It'd be lovely to think Lauren could win this, but it'll probably go to one of the national names.

Hero Of The Year
Carl Barat
Pete Doherty
Faris Rotter
Alex Turner
Gerard Way

Villain Of The Year
Tony Blair
Johnny Borrell
George Bush
Pete Doherty
Gerard Way

Gerard Way is such a wonderful name, for all the wrong reasons - it sounds like the postal address for council offices in somewhere like Southampton, doesn't it? If you cancel out people appear on both lists, the hero has to be either Carl or Faris Rotter - so, that's Carl then - and the villain is either Tony or George. Just when they thought they'd never have to face a public vote again.

Sexiest Man
Carl Barat
Matt Bellamy
Pete Doherty
Brandon Flowers
Gerard Way

Sexiest Woman
Lily Allen
Beth Ditto
Kate Jackson
Kate Moss
Karen O

Next year, we could have a "sexiest kate" category all of its own. We reckon the blokes list contains a perfect ten, if you add them all together - although, to be fair, the minuses next to Flowers and Doherty do hobble them somewhat. And, seriously, NME: Kate Jackson would eat you for breakfast. Actually, you probably wouldn't make it as far as the kebab stand on the way home.

Best Dressed
Carl Barat
Russell Brand
Pete Doherty
Brandon Flowers
Faris Rotter

Worst Dressed
Lily Allen
Johnny Borrell
Russell Brand
Pete Doherty
Faris Rotter

Johnny Borrell will be trying to put a brave face on the poor showing of Razorlight tonight - worst dressed and villain, and both for him personally. Is there nothing he can berate his hapless band-mate-pigeons for?

Worst Album
Lily Allen - 'Alright, Still'
The Feeling - 'Twelve Stops And Home'
My Chemical Romance - 'The Black Parade'
Razorlight - 'Razorlight'
Robbie Williams - 'Rudebox'

Aha! That's it. Break out the straps of chastisement, Johnny. People would have bloody loved that album if it wasn't for the instrumentalisationalism being so lame. Bad, bad Razorlight.

Mind you, Rudebox was miles worse. Even Newton found it hard to pretend it was any good.

Worst Band
The Feeling
The Horrors
The Kooks
Panic! At The Disco
Razorlight

Johnny, you're clearly going to have to offload those chumps. See how they drag you down?

We're bemused as to why The Feeling are getting such a kicking, though. Yes, they probably deserve it, but... in a world with Larrakin Love, aren't our pointy-toed boots aiming in the wrong direction?

Best Venue
Brixton Academy
Glasgow Barrowlands
London KOKO
London Astoria
Manchester Apollo

What criteria should be applied here? Quality of toilets? Niceness of doorstaff?

Best Website
DrownedinSound
Last.FM
MySpace
Pitchfork
YouTube
Not including NME.COM

Why not including NME.com? Either throw your hat in, or don't. Actually... wouldn't a best music magazine category be rather fun, come to that?

NME closes

All good things come to an end; some more abruptly than others. Four months after launch, IPC has pulled the plug on NME Ireland. [Link requires free registration]

NME Ireland editor Steve Cummins is less than thrilled:

"It wasn't selling as well as anticipated but that's not to say that sales were bad. They were up an awful lot on what they had been before the Irish edition.

"There was no talk of it being on a trial run or anything like that, although I was aware that for the first period everything is on a trial basis. I think NME intended to be in it for the long haul but IPC decided to pull it."

Although hopes for the title were high at launch, it seems there's not been much in the way of advertising support for the title.

Dublin's Club NME nights will continue; readers in the Republic will now receive the UK edition instead. If they want it.